


Awake, awake

by Unpronounceable



Category: The Hollow (Cartoon)
Genre: (but really slow on the comfort), AU - Adam made it out of the game, Adam-Centric, Amnesia, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, In This House We Support Poly, Multi, No characters except Adam are really present but they matter, Not corporate-friendly, Polyamory, Slow Burn, Teenagers, We'll get to them, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:33:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24493561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unpronounceable/pseuds/Unpronounceable
Summary: "“I’ve spent enough time sitting and laying around for the past couple of years. I’m just catching up.”By this point, his mom doesn’t get upset when he mentions being in the hospital. They’ve hashed out the topic over many afternoons and emotional evenings, and he’s pretty sure she’s making peace with the fact that her son is back.Her amnesiac, anxiety-ridden, weirdly athletic son with the rare PTSD symptoms.He hopes she’s making peace with it. That makes one of them."---There's a five-year long gap in Adam's memory, and he's told to leave it be, that the things he's remembering are just false memories. He was a victim of tragedy, and should try to move on from it.He can't, though, not until he knows what happened.Not until he stops missing friends he never had.
Relationships: Adam & Kai & Mira (The Hollow), Adam/Kai/Mira (The Hollow)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 40





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, welcome to my little AU. Tags will change as the story goes on, but you can expect some pretty mature themes.
> 
> I intend for this to be a complete series, we'll see how well I stick to that, haha.

A lot of the times when Adam wakes up in his room, he gets the urge to raise his hand up to his eyes, as if to check that it’s all real.

Of course it’s real. Why wouldn’t it be?

He thinks he used to be a bit lazy, when he was younger. He definitely enjoyed sleeping in when he could, and would sometimes fall asleep at random points in the day, but that was years ago. Now, he gets antsy if he’s sedentary for too long. Instead of napping through the day, he wakes up throughout the night, but remembers little or nothing of his dreams. Instead of playing video games in his free time, he shies away from the computer if it’s not school-related.

He doesn’t know when this change happened. Sometime during his years long memory gap, he supposes. 

Getting out of bed is an easy feat and just one, smooth movement. He doesn’t know how he got so graceful and limber, either, but it feels ingrained in him, to the point where a few quick strength exercises and stretches are a part of his morning routine. 

He used to _hate_ gym class.

It helps that he’s not waking his mother up by clambering around the kitchen at 6 AM. By the time he’s exercised and showered, she tends to be just getting up, and they exchange their quick good-mornings by the bathroom door. 

She smiles, he smiles, it’s over in a few seconds. She no longer reaches out to touch him, confirming that he’s there, and he no longer panics at the sight of her, like he’s forgotten that he’s home.

He makes his own breakfast- nothing too sweet, but he enjoys a good smoothie- and flits around until online classes start. 

He’s not sure how he feels about doing school from home. He has no choice now, still deemed too at-risk to go to classes with hundreds of people and little supervision, but he doesn’t hate it- he feels like he’d be overwhelmed by the people, his peers, all the chatter and bright lights.

Did he enjoy school before? Maybe when he was really young, but he remembers being a bit of an outcast from 4th grade and up, and as soon as he hits his teens, the memory gets muddled and his head starts to hurt. 

Did he have friends? Does anyone miss him?

_Yes_ , the little voice inside him says, the one that’s quiet but so _certain_ and makes itself heard when he knows something, not through memory, but through feeling. _You had someone. You miss them. You think they miss you too._

He’s the first one to log in, as always. He gets away with not having his camera on, and the sight of himself on a screen always sets him on edge for some reason. For the few seconds before he turns the camera off, he can’t stop looking at himself, on the screen, trapped in his little digital box and looking right back, mirrored.

Or, maybe he’s just narcissistic. He does spend an awfully long time on his hair.

By the time the clock strikes 11, he’s pacing circles around the kitchen table, listening to the lecture but unable to sit still and look at the screen. He feels like he needs to be doing something, like he’s slacking off, even though he’s literally doing the only thing he needs to do today.

His mom walks in, smiling sympathetically and patting his shoulder. 

_He’s always grabbing your shoulders, your sides-_

“Got the crazy legs again, honey?” she quips, refilling her coffee cup. Adam suppresses the need to clutch at his head- it worries her- and smiles back bashfully. 

“I’ve spent enough time sitting and laying around for the past couple of years. I’m just catching up.”

By this point, she doesn’t get upset when he mentions being in the hospital and the subsequent days following his release. They’ve hashed out the topic over many stressful afternoons and emotional evenings, and he’s pretty sure she’s making peace with the fact that her son is back.

Her amnesiac, anxiety-ridden, weirdly athletic son with the rare PTSD symptoms. 

His smile slips off as she turns away, replaced with a frown that's quickly becoming permanent.

He hopes she’s making peace with it. That makes one of them.

\---

When Adam was around eleven years old, he remembers taking a field trip with his school. They employed the buddy system by alphabet order while they went on a short hike, and he held hands with another boy, Ben. 

Ben was rather small, reedy in the way that most kids are at that age, and he was terrified of spiders and crawly bugs. Adam was no fan of them either, but Ben took it to a new level, shying away from every tree and bush and squeezing Adam’s hand the whole time.

  
Adam’s memory is terrible, these days, but he remembers this vividly:

He looked over at Ben, who was staring resolutely forwards, and they’d almost made it out of the forest. On Ben’s hood, right where it met his neck, was a big, fat spider. 

Adam didn’t like spiders, and would never go near one, but he knew Ben would be terrified. Somehow, that gave him the courage to reach over and grab the spider in his fist, tossing it to the side immediately after. 

It took Ben a few seconds to catch up, but once he did, he demanded to know if there had been a spider; Adam admitted it, but asked Ben to please not cry, he already took it and threw it away. 

Ben said Adam was the bravest, and looked at him with gratitude and trust, and hugged him, and Adam felt like something just slid into place. 

After that, he mostly remembers being miserable in school. 

It wasn’t all bad- having no friends in school meant he had plenty of time to study and take part in extra-curriculars and sports, which meant no one could really say anything when he spent a lot of time on the computer. He was already doing so well, so what’s the harm?

At least online, he had friends. 

At least when he played games, he could be what he wanted, the feeling he’d been chasing since he was eleven. People hurt him in the game, too, but it was always just shy of real, impersonal and just as a part of a shared goal.

When Adam played online, he could log off when he wanted, turn off his mic when he wanted. No one saw him and made fun of him for being upset. No one could hear his voice crack when he tried something and failed. No one witnessed him kicking his chair in frustration, and most importantly, no one saw the way he looked at them, the way he couldn’t help glancing at the cute boys with their clunky headsets, grinning bashfully when he made a good play, almost leaning into their voices.

And he could strike back- he was strong, and he was in a team, and having other people to play with meant he wasn’t as scared, himself. Just like with the spider, his insecurities and fear took a backseat when he was working with- _for-_ other people, when _they depend on him. He’s pretty sure he’s not the most capable one of them, by himself- that title has to go to M̵̡̹̭̯̆̈́̔̓̎̅̊̂͒̊i̷͓̯͋̈͑̀̕͝r̵͓͑̕a̴̧͌́̓̉̄̊͂͆. But they look to him for a plan and for protection- especially Ḱ̴̪̔ạ̷̤̏̑i̷̓̂͜- and Adam is just as stuck here as they are, just as messed up, but he swears he’ll be perfect for them, for_ them-

“Adam!” 

His mom’s voice has taken on a tone of fear, and as soon as Adam snaps back into the present, he remembers to breathe and then bite back a shout because his head feels like it’s being squeezed like a grape. 

He sits with his head between his legs for a little while, it hurts, the hand running soothing lines up and down his back are both helpful _and yet not- he’s not used to these kinds of touches, not from his friends, and they’re trying to calm him down but they’re making his heart race_ OW, STOP IT-

“Remember the mindfulness stuff, honey. Describe it for me?”  
“Kitchen, uh, I’m supposed to be listening to a lecture but I didn’t want to sit and watches the screens- _ngh_ .”  
“What can you hear?”  
“Hhh, y-you.”  
She sounds like she might cry. Adam hopes with all his heart he doesn’t make his mom cry again.  
“Kitchen clock ticking. My lecture, in my headphones.”  
He’s still trying to finish school, but he’s not sure where he wants to go from there.  
“Fridge making that noise. Cars outside.”  
Not their suburban house- his mom moved into an apartment after the divorce. It was a very nice apartment, but sometimes Adam misses his old house.

He relaxes with every word, the headache dulling down to almost nothing as soon as he stops trying to dig into his memories.  
When he lifts his head, everything feels too high-definition, as it always does, and too quiet. 

“Okay, sweetie?”  
“Yeah, mom, I’m- I’m fine.” 

There’s tears in her eyes, but she doesn’t cry. She does, however, hug him, and he hugs back, though his heart isn’t in it. He’s just tired.

“Why don’t you go lay down, huh? You can study in your room, I’ll let you know when dinner’s ready.”

“Sure, thanks, mom.”

The last thing he wants to do is be still, but he’d rather appease his mom and get some time alone than to confront her, so he packs his laptop back and goes to his bedroom.

  
  


Once he’s there, he carefully shuts the door, picks up his pillow, and roundhouse-kicks it. 

He knows he's supposed to be trying to lead a regular life, to move away from the tragedy that is his disappearance and find himself again. They want him to be normal, but he _can't._

He can’t deal with his mother tip-toeing around him, and how much he worries her no matter how much he tries to act normal. He hates how much he’s expected to just be inactive, when he feels like ants are running over his skin when he idles for too long. And he can’t believe they expect him to just accept all this and move on. 

Move on to what?! He lost his teen years to hospital stays and a medically induced coma and a giant black void that bites back every time he tries to peer into it. He barely knows who he _is!_

The pillow explodes into feathers and filling. It's extremely satisfying, for the first few seconds before Adam realizes he's made a mess and ruined a perfectly good pillow. He sighs and picks up the pillowcase, looking down at the white _snow_ feathers, can vacuums handle feathers? He bends down to look at _a baby polarbear, he doesn't want it to die but the mom is right there and I don't know CPR, M̸̬ĩ̷̼̓r̸̜̉å̴̖̲-_

Five minutes and one mindfulness breakdown later, he lays down in the middle of the flurry of feathers and just... lets himself drift.

He doesn’t know what happened, because everything gets blurry around age… what, fourteen? Fifteen? God, he’s nineteen now. That’s a lot of years to lose to something you can’t remember. 

He doesn’t remember. But he heard things, later.

He’d been found, collapsed, in a town in a different state. Someone had happened to be going by and took him to a hospital; they were quickly cleared as a suspect, since they’d just been returning from a vacation and hadn’t even been in the country for a while.

He was seventeen, then.  
He’d been missing since he was fourteen.

He’d sustained brain damage, just shy of permanent and unfixable, but he recovered remarkably. Doctors weren’t sure what, exactly, had caused it, but the best guess was severe stress and long periods of being sedentary. They asked him about it; he told the truth, that he couldn’t remember anything out of the ordinary.

The first assumption was drugs, some sort of child trafficking ring that he’d escaped from. He did show signs of withdrawal of some kind, but no known drugs could be found in his system, nor any nerve or tissue atrophy that you’d normally find. He was malnourished and weak, but had clearly been fed regularly, and showed no signs of physical or sexual abuse. His hair had even been recently trimmed- for someone who had been missing for years, he was in a remarkably good state.

Mentally, though, it was another story.

He had already been a bit of an intense kid, says his mom, but his anxiety reached new heights after being found. He would freak out if he couldn’t immediately move, and had been able to get out of hospital restraints by using remarkable strength that tore a muscle in his arm. He exhibited physical tendencies that implied he knew martial arts, but he only ever remembered playing some baseball when he was younger.  
On top of that, his reflexes were far above average, even when he was sedated and out of it. That part, Adam didn’t really hate.

There were other, little things that couldn’t be explained away with drugs. Like how he could no longer process neon green lights, and only saw them as white. His eyes were okay, so it had something to do with his brain processing things. His sense of taste was remarkably sensitive, while his light sensitivity was abnormally low. He’d been right-handed all his life, but was now left-handed. No one could explain it, least of all him- he hadn’t even been fully conscious when they noticed a lot of these things.  
  
Apparently, he’d talked a lot while he was out of it- trying to reach for people no one saw, talking to thin air, calling names that no one else was familiar with. He remembers none of it, but what he said was so fantastical that the doctors assumed it had to do with some sort of psychosis, and kept him under supervision for a long time.

His inability to remember things, as well as frequent flashbacks and forgetting his surroundings, alluded to some sort of Traumatic Stress Disorder. The headaches might be a defense mechanism, the psychiatrists said, to try and save his mind from experiencing too much stress. 

Much later, his mom slipped and revealed that there were other kids, around his age, found in similar circumstances in a similar area. After waking up, they had shortly died from aneurysms or brain hemorrhages.

So, okay, he should probably try to avoid the stress of remembering if he wants to keep his health.

But he doesn’t necessarily need to _remember_ everything. He can analyze his behaviour and connect some dots from there.

He knows wants to talk to someone…more than one person. He wants to reach out with his mind, connect with those someones, and just bask in their company for a little bit. Feel better, just because they were trying to make him feel better, even if they weren’t necessarily saying anything special.  
His brain is fried, but his heart remembers- Adam cringes at how that sounds, but it’s true. He remembers enough to know that he _wants_ something- something is desperately _missing._

Adam sighs, blinking away frustrated tears and curling in on himself.

He wishes someone was laying next to him. He just doesn’t know _who_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still here! With this chapter done, the action will start to pick up and I can get to my favourite parts~

However much he doesn’t like sitting in front of a screen, there’s no denying that most of the world’s information can be found on the internet.

So, reluctantly- and secretly- Adam sits down, cracks his knuckles, and starts researching.

His mom would have a fit if she knew. He’s deliberately delving into things that might start a migraine, might put stress on his brain and blood vessels, but what else is he going to do?

He can’t just sit around and wait for the answers to find him. That’s not who he is.

Thanks to his mom being a gold-star lawyer, news of Adam’s mysterious visit to amnesia-land are scarce. The news of his disappearance, oh, they’re all over- more coverage means bigger odds of witnesses- but once he’d been found, his mom induced an Adam-update blackout. 

But he wasn’t the only one to make it out of...wherever he was.

A lot of kids had been found dead, but that wasn’t exactly new. Teenage disappearances had risen around 2004, before Adam was even born, and stayed high to this day. 

Some kids had been found under similar circumstances and either gone into a coma or died from aneurysms and bloodclots before they could talk.

And, after hours of digging and scanning, Adam found out that one had lived. 

A teenage girl, just a year older than him, had disappeared from a licensed care home, sparking a state-wide search that was ultimately fruitless. She’d been found in the outskirts of a town, just like Adam, disoriented and with a gap in her memory, but alive.

Adam scans the article, finding more and more tidbits that resonate with him. Unexplained amnesia, malnourished but not nearly at starvation levels, hair unkempt but not long enough to have been untouched, instances of synesthesia that weren’t present before the disappearance. Reading about this person who, most likely, went through the same thing he did, was igniting a spark of anxiety in Adam. 

Why did they, the two of them, make it where the others didn’t? What was different?

The girl didn’t look like much, when Adam scrolled to her picture on one of the pages. Dark skin, short-cropped hair, and there in the left corner, in tiny lettering, her name-

_ Iris _

_ “Iris!” _

_ The tall, black-haired girl yells, but is distracted by a wave of fire that she counters fairly easily. The giant one just kicked Adam a good 30-feet distance, but got hit in the head by a projectile rock almost immediately, so he counts it as pretty even. _

_ He’s on the ground, behind a wall of fire. Adam hates making K̷̤̻͖̞̣͔͇̩̯̪͊̽͒̊̋̊̈́̕̚͜â̴̞͖̠̤͈̼̲̱͕̩̬̱̐͊i̵̢̧̤̦̳̝̪͚̦͎̣̮̖̼̊͠ take the front, too aware of how they only have one life, but no one else is fit to counter the other team’s own pyromancer, and he’s doing a pretty good job. _

_ The giant falls to her knees and shrinks, back to her usual way-less-than-average-size, and the fire-fist girl is by her side in a second. It’s a second too late, though- by that time, Adam is on his feet, Kai has gained the upper hand in the fire-blast competition, and Reeve has decided to join them. _

_ The girl- Iris- is smaller now, but she feels smaller, too, looking up with large, frightened eyes as she holds on to her friend. _

_ “Nisha…?” _ _  
_ _ “Don’t worry, Iris,” the taller girl grins, “I’m gonna kick their ass for that.” _

Adam comes back to his senses on the floor with bruised knees, a headache, and a direction.

\---

“Hello, Clemency Community Care Center, how can we help you?”   
“Um- hi. I’m looking for a Hawkins, first name Iris?”    
“Are you friend or family?”   
  


Well, neither, I’m a paranoid man who wants to know what the hell happened to give him amnesia and I saw her in a flashback, and by the way, I’m not crazy.

Right. He doesn’t say that, though it’s the truth, but instead he lies:

  
“Well, neither. I’m actually an independent journalist, uh, I’m writing about the missing teens case. I was hoping I could talk to her?” 

He’s usually not an adept liar, but it slips off his tongue with only minimum hesitance. It’s not too far from the truth. An independent journalist can technically be anyone, right? And the title...feels right, somehow. 

He doesn’t want to get too far ahead of himself, but once he figures out what’s going on, he’d love to write about it someday.    
Mostly to expose whoever took years off his life.

“I’m sorry sir, I can’t give you contact with any of our clients unless you’re mentioned in the emergency contact list.”

Of course.

“Of course, just, uh- can I leave her a message? Please?”

The nurse hesitates, seemingly checking something over, but is willing to indulge him.

“I can leave the name, number and reason, but there’s no guarantee she’ll want to call you back.”

“Of course. That’d be great, thank you, really. Um.” 

He racks his brain, trying to come up with a good message. This is his one chance to make contact with someone who might know something. He needs to make it count. He can’t take being so uncertain for the rest of his life.

“Tell her. Tell her that my name is Adam Chavez, and I think we have a mutual interest...in what happened a few years ago. And that I hope we can help each other.”

He leaves his number, too, and then...he waits.

The phone call comes in a couple of days later, and Adam foolishly almost doesn’t answer. Not recognizing the number, the unknown of it all sets off his anxiety, but he remembers Iris in the nick of time and scrambles to answer, knocking down a lamp in the process and not caring.

“Yes? Hello?”

“Hi, is this Adam...Chavez?”

“Yeah, speaking.”

“I’m calling from Clemency Community Care Center, you left a message for one Iris Hawkins?”

Adam fistpumps briefly in celebration, biting his lip to keep from sounding too enthusiastic as he mumbled an affirmative. 

  
“She’s willing to meet up with you, but only in person, during supervised visiting hours. They’re on from twelve to four every day, and again from eight to ten, every evening. You can go ahead and drop by if that sounds okay to you.” 

“Perfect, that’s great, thank you.”

He peeks out of the window, catching just the tail lights of his mom going to work. She’ll be gone most of the day, and although the bus ride to the town where Iris lives will take up most of his day, he needs all the headstart he can get to avoid his mother’s worrying and grounding.

“Is tonight okay?”

\---

He wasn’t sure what to bring to this kind of meeting, so he brought a little bit of everything. Snacks, water, pen and paper, his phone and charger, headphones, tablet, gauze, extra socks, painkillers, mittens, and more. 

He felt silly, even as he packed his backpack to the brim. He was going to meet with a young girl in a supervised environment, not running away from home. It just felt like a big deal, was all; it was his first and only lead, and he’d hate to mess it up.

Which is why he currently struggled to pull his backpack from beneath the seat where it had slipped during his brief nap.

He didn’t think he’d be able to fall asleep like that, but something about the rough and rumbling movements of the bus put him at ease, even though he was sitting and in public. That’s something to note for later.

Unfortunately, this meant a missed call from his mother, and a concerned couple of texts when he was absent during dinner. He shot her a quick ‘ _am out, be back tonight, love you_ ’ text, but he knows he’s in for questioning on the stand when he gets home. 

One problem at a time.

The Clemency Community Care Center- god, what an annoying name, he’s just going to refer to it as Clemency- is about what you’d expect. A security guard lets him in through a large, iron gate, painted white to seem less imposing, which dramatically fails due to the wire net all around the property. 

He hopes they’re not keeping anyone here against their will, in a gilded- or whitened- cage, an  _ illusion of a home but they know it’s a prison, they  _ know  _ but they can’t leave, these people practically own them now and even if Adam made it, he could  _ never  _ leave them behind- _ ow, okay. No. He needs to keep his mind clear for this.

Once inside, the suspicion dies down into nothing. People are freely strolling around the grounds in the warm evening air, assistants and nurses in white helping some of them walk or simply talking with them. It looks calm, friendly, even.

A brief talk with one of the ladies in the reception area later, and he’s sitting down in a sort of cafeteria-esque room, but without the food; just a lot of tables, big windows, and people overseeing him. There’s only a couple more people visiting, a woman and two young adults talking with a young man that looks like he might be related to them, and a mother talking lovingly to her daughter, who smiles but doesn’t make eye contact. He wonders why those people are here- they look so young. Which, of course, he knew about- a quick search of Clemency had revealed it to be a sort of institute for teenagers and young adults who couldn’t live alone or with family- but it surprises him, anyway.

Iris finally joins him, and Adam flinches when he sees her face, expecting a memory to surface, some pain- but nothing happens. She just sits down across the table, fidgeting with her too-long sleeves.

It’s...painfully awkward.

They both open their mouth to speak at the same time, then apologize at the same time, and offer the other to go ahead- Adam insists, because his face feels warm and he just knows he’ll stick his foot in it if he starts.

“You uh...do you know something…about the missing kids thing?” she finally mumbles, reserved and downcast. 

“Uh, yes...and no. Not exactly. I was actually hoping you might know something I don’t.”

  
She shrugs slowly, still avoiding eye contact, and he waits for a moment before it’s clear that she won’t answer. 

“I’m- I’m trying to find out more about that whole thing. The missing kids, what happened, why some made it and some didn’t. Do you...remember anything?”

She shakes her head, glances up at him, and looks so uncomfortable about needing to elaborate that it rubs off on Adam and he almost apologizes for just, like, being there.

“Nothing, really...just feelings.”   
  
“Feelings?”   
  
“Feeling...scared. And then not. And then scared again.”

“No painful flashbacks, vivid memories, other kids?”

She looks at him like he’s talking in tongues, curling in on herself even more. 

“...a name…I don’t think-”

“Name? Another person? Who were they, do you remember?”

Iris stands up, and a personnel who had been eyeing them starts making their way over. Iris is retreating; Adam’s blowing it. He’s _ruining_ it.

The pit in his stomach and the cold sweat is familiar, at least- that’s plain anxiety, right there. At least he knows how to work around that.

“Wait-”   
  
“I don’t think I can help you. Sorry.”

“I just-”   
  
“Good luck with your story.”   
  
“Nisha!”

He’s so desperate to make this work that he doesn’t realize he’s spoken until Iris turns around, no longer cowering, but wide-eyed and _calculating._

The security personnel joins them, placing a tense hand on Adam’s shoulder. They say something about letting Iris rest, but she herself stops them, waves them off, and looks at him with a challenge. 

Adam swallows, and grabs onto this last straw of hope.

“She...was with you, right? That’s one of the kids.”   
  
“How do you know that name?” Iris asks.

“I remember it, I- I was...one of the kids. One of two, who lived.”

The transformation of Iris is like watching night turn into day. She straightens up, and Adam realizes she’s not the helpless little girl she looks like, and remembers what it feels like to be kicked by a shoe size two-hundred.

“Jackson, could I take him to the private rooms, please?”

Adam blinks, but realizes she’s talking to the aid that’s currently staring him down.

“Iris, I don’t know about that.”   
  
“Please? I’m sure.”

They talk in hushed tones for a bit, and Adam’s hands shake as he comes to terms with not having ruined everything. The man- Jackson- eventually nods, and takes them to a much smaller, more casually furnished room. 

“I’ll be _right. Outside,_ ” Jackson warns, before shutting the doors and giving them some privacy. Adam bounces on his heels and rubs his hands together awkwardly, suddenly not anxious but just...flustered. He gets the feeling that Jackson assumed Adam was _trying something_ with Iris, and that stuff always puts him on edge a bit. 

“So, uh. You sure got people looking out for you here, huh?”

Iris snickers, also awkward but rapidly less so. 

“They get protective ‘cause I’m so small, and ‘cause I went missing for a while. They mean well.”

She sits down on a padded chair, and Adam sits adjacent to her. He’s prepared to be the one doing the talking, but Iris surprises him yet again.

“That name...Nisha. That’s the only thing I really remember. I don’t know who they- or, she, I guess- are...or were. But I remember the name, and the feeling.”

“The feeling?” Adam asks.

Iris smiles, and looks away, and Adam somehow knows what it means.

“Strong...and big, I guess. That’s how the name makes me feel. Big.”

They must have  _ loved each other. _

_ Adam sees it, once things calm down and they’re not trying to kill each other anymore. The way Nisha stands slightly in front of the other two, the way Iris sticks by Nisha’s side. The tender way she tuts at a cut on the pyromancer’s head, the teasing way Nisha says she can’t even feel it.  _

_ The boy- Tyler- makes eye contact with him, and shrugs good-naturedly, like ‘well, what’re you gonna do’.  _

_ He then looks over Adam’s shoulder, nodding towards M̶̼̞̱̖̺͕̆͋̔̄̈̕ǐ̶͓̝r̸͔̖̭̠͂a̵̛̙͚̞͗̀̅̍ who approaches Adam with a bottle of water.  _

_ “Your face is gonna get stuck like that if you don’t stop worrying”, she says, and uses her thumb to forcibly wipe Adam’s frown off. It works, not because she un-bunches his eyebrows, but because she’s there and smiling, and that means he’s smiling too. _

_ She gestures towards the girls on the other team, who are now whispering something between themselves.  _

_ "Think they're like...you know, a Thing?" she asks. _

_"You know I'm no good at seeing these things," Adam answers, and doesn't miss the look on M̶̼̞̱̖̺͕̆͋̔̄̈̕ǐ̶͓̝r̸͔̖̭̠͂a̵̛̙͚̞͗̀̅̍'s face when she replies,_

_"No, you're really not, huh?"_

“-call someone?” he hears Iris ask, and finds himself with his forehead on the table, hands tugging at his hair in pain. 

“No,” he rasps out, “no no. It’s...it’s fine. It...h-happens. Just, wait…-”

Table, chair, pillows. Iris. His backpack. There’s no noise, overpowering silence, and that messes him up, but he doesn’t trust himself to open his eyes yet. He needs to fill the silence.

“Your hair...is different. Why stop- stop dyeing it?”

He hears the soft shuffle of Iris sitting back down, after a few seconds’ hesitation. She must catch on to what’s happening, because she starts talking aimlessly.

“Well, when they found me, it had grown out a lot. They had to shave it to do some kind of brain surgery...I almost didn’t make it. But since then, I’ve felt like changing the colour. It doesn’t feel right to go back to purple, when everything’s so different now. I was thinking maybe blue...or red. Black is just too drab, I guess. I like styling my body.”   
  


The soft talking eases Adam’s pounding head and pulls him away from his memories. With a few deep breaths, he opens his eyes, and gradually sits back up. Iris gets quieter as he moves, and when he meets her eyes, they’re big and worried, but cautious. 

“Sorry,” Adam forces out. “That...that’s my souvenir from the disappearance. Painful memories, literally.”

Iris sits back down, slowly like he’s a wild animal, but her eyes have that calculating look again. 

“What set it off?”   
  
“You said… well. It’s a lot to get into, but the way you talked about her- Nisha- I think...you guys were, like, really close.”

Iris nods thoughtfully. 

“Did she...die?”

“I don’t know, Iris,” Adam sighs. “I’m sorry.”

Iris’s eyes start to glisten, and she angrily blinks the moisture away, mimicking his sigh. She’s silent for a while, opening and closing her mouth as if trying to find the words, and Adam gives her time. 

Eventually, she settles for “you’re going to expose whoever made the disappearances happen.”

It’s not the question he expects- it’s not even a question- but he nods.    
  


“If I can figure it out, yeah. I’m gonna bring them to justice.”

Iris nods, resolutely. Adam can see the fighting spirit in her, now; she looks pissed. 

“Good. I can’t help you much, since I can’t remember. But I can tell you when-  _ where-  _ I stopped remembering.”

Adam leaves Clemency Community Care Center with a new lead, a new direction, and Iris’s phone number. 

A friend, she said, if he ever needed to talk to someone who gets it.

\---

His mom is not happy with him when he comes home, but she visibly reigns it in, forcing a smile when he says he made it through the whole day without getting a flashback. Which, okay, untrue. But he can’t have her monitoring him too hard.

Not if he has to go all the way to Texas.

He knows what he has to do right away; now that he’s active and working on something, he feels like a fire has been rekindled. He can hardly sleep from nerves, but it doesn’t make him tired- on the contrary, he’s grateful when the sun finally rises and he has an excuse to get out of bed.

He spends Saturday with his mom, as a sort of apology for running off...and an apology for being about to run off again, without her knowledge. It’s nice to hang out, just the two of them, and he’s abruptly hit with how lucky he is to have her. Not everyone has parents that love and support them like this, however overbearing she can sometimes be.

_I have to leave,_ he thinks at her as she ponders whether to get a single or double shot of espresso. _I’m sorry. I’ll be back._

_No, you won’t,_ says that sure little voice in Adam’s head. Adam doesn’t know how to argue with it, so he doesn’t.

He spends Sunday packing as discreetly as he can. Only one bag, a backpack, but a large one, and he packs responsibly. 

Sunday night, in the dark hours of the morning, he climbs out of his window and silently scales the building until he makes it to the fire escape, climbing down the couple of floors between him and the ground. His mom will think he’s sleeping, and leave for work- she had to go extra early, she’d told him, something about needing to meet someone over a case- and she won’t come home until late, and he’ll be gone.

He left a note, explaining what little he could. He didn’t lie, not at all, but he can’t exactly give her any details- he hopes she won’t be hurt, won’t blame herself.

_ I’m just traveling a bit, figuring myself out. I’ve let the school know. I just need some space for myself. I'm not in danger and I'm not upset. I love you, please don’t worry. _

When he walks into the evening mist, to his first of what will be many bus stops, he feels...not _calm_ , but set. Determined.

And he feels like he can hear two sets of footsteps behind him, walking with him; two people he never knew, with him in spirit, joining him on his journey to find out who they were.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter mentions some bullying. Nothing graphic, just a little emotional, so be warned!

There’s a minor setback to Adam’s plan: his journey includes a lot of bus and train rides, and he hates, hates, _hates_ sitting down for long periods of time. The roadside motel he slept in for a measly four hours didn’t do his body any favours, either.

By the time he arrives in Texas- thank you, high-speed trains and efficient bus routes- he feels more like a bundle of jittery nerves than he does a person, and he nearly rips the straps off his backpack when he wrenches it free from the overhead rack. 

As soon as he steps off, he walks into a wall of sweltering heat, and remembers how much he also hates being sweaty; which he definitely is now, great. Did he always sweat this much? Is that another thing he cashed in on during his amnesia trip?

The backpack straps chafe against his neck and the back of his shirt feels like it’s merging with his skin and he’s grumpy and would love to hit something if it didn’t mean movement and more sweating. Instead, he picks up his cellphone and deftly ignores the message from his mom.

> To: Iris 
> 
> This road trip sucks. :( 

He doesn’t wait for a reply, but it feels a little better that someone else knows he’s having a bad time. Misery, meet company.

He checks into his little hostel with the regretfully poor air conditioning- because what if he needs the money for something else, what if he _miscalculated_ , can’t take that risk, stay the a lousy beige-coloured hostel with the condom machine out front- only just to shower off the feeling of being on a bus forever a day, and then he’s off.

In the lobby there are those coin-operated lockers, which he uses to stuff his backpack into, out of a nostalgic sense of paranoia.

He feels better as soon as he’s on the move, popping in one earbud for background noise as he drifts around the city. 

It’s all unfamiliar in the most generic way possible. 

The city saw a significant boom in population sometime back, and from the street of his shitty little motel, Adam can see gleaming, towering spires of corporate buildings and skyscrapers. The weather is so hot it’s drab and grey, grass so dry it crunches under his shoes, various posters reminding people to conserve their water throughout the hot season. There’s birds, though not a lot of them, chittering lazily as if they also can’t muster any energy in the late-afternoon blaze. 

Adam wonders what they’re saying, what it would be like to talk to them, and then wonders why he wonders that.

The too-familiar ache of feeling too alone creeps up on him, once again, and he sighs. He doesn’t mind being alone, and he silently warns every pedestrian to not come too near him, and yet he feels like he shouldn’t be wandering alone right now, or at least that someone should be waiting for him back at the motel.

The city suddenly looks a lot bigger, more maze-like, winding and spiraling in sharp corners and boxy houses.

This is where Iris disappeared. 

He checks to see if she’s replied yet and when he presses his little red [1] icon, there’s an uninformative but appreciated

> Iris:  
>  “Aw :( “. 

  
It tells him nothing, but it soothes him just a bit, anyway.

It feels good to have someone to worry about again, in a way. A target for his paranoia-by-proxy. 

Afternoon settles into evening, and still, Adam can’t seem to stop walking around. Yes, to shake the jitters out of his legs, but also…

He’s definitely lost.

It feels like it makes sense to drift towards the city centre and its well-lit high-rise buildings, since that’s probably where most establishments are, and therefore maps and directions, right? Plus, Adam’s gotten pretty hungry in his aimless wandering. So, he takes aim for the blinking red light atop the biggest building he can see, and only takes a few wrong turns on his way.

He smells a kebab place before he sees it, just on the edge of where normal mom-and-pop shops make way for the gentrified and incredibly expensive restaurants, and despite not liking most things he can’t classify as directly healthy, something compels him to get the biggest Döner kebab they have.

Although he hated the heat of the sun on his back, something about the smell of coals and the waves of heat coming from the shop is comforting and familiar.

_“Lady and gentleman, your own personal bonfire-”_

It's not a strong one, so he lets the memory float over him without getting caught in it, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply.  
Like waves in the ocean, Adam.  
Car horns, people chatting, the smell and taste of a really good kebab.  
He’s fine.

Deducing that buses coming and going from more or less the same direction means there’s probably some kind of station nearby, Adam continues walking, looking around as casually as he can while trying to take in every single detail. It’s almost dark, just a sliver of blue left from what he can see of the sky, almost washed out by all the bright lights

and then he sees it.

It’s relatively small on the side of one of the tall buildings, not quite front-and-center but off in the shadows, to the side. He can barely see it, and yet it’s like a void; the concrete of the building has been bleached and faded into a boney white colour, but there’s that shadow of a logo that was once on the building, a darker, more untouched shade of concrete. 

It’s a spiraling, square symbol.

_‘Can a spiral even be square-shaped?’_ , Adam thinks, and then the pain hits him like a _freight train._

_The building doesn’t display any of the familiar logos or catchphrases of the game itself, and Adam is not too young to worry about it._

_He remembers all those educational shorts about stranger danger, peer pressure, all that stuff- it didn’t stop him from coming here, though, and while he’s on edge, he’s not sure he regrets it. He wishes he could have done it without hurting his mother- running away in the dead of night like a hoodlum, surely she raised him better than that?  
Evidently not, since Adam is here, afraid but determined._

_The man steering him into the building doesn’t wait to let him look around, doesn’t look him in the eye, just hustles him forwards with steps too big for Adam’s 14-year-old legs, but Adam can take it. He can take all of this, he’s sure of it- even if the matches are hard, or if he's outmatched by kids way better than him, he'll just get better and overcome it. He'll still get to play, and be with kids like him, and get away from the overbearing shadow of the life he's managed to mess up back home. This might be tough, but it's a fresh start all the same._

  
_At least it’s not his peers, watching him like hawks just waiting for him to mess up so they can call him out on it, glad to have another reason to push him around._

_It’s not the walk home from school, eyes trained downwards to avoid eye contact if he so happened to bump into anyone, to avoid making himself a target, and yet straining his ears to hear if someone’s running at him, laughing at him._

_It’s not the frustrated anger of being disliked, beat up and torn down, and not even knowing what you did wrong, how to fix it._

_It’s not the unique kind of heartache when he looks at a boy and wants something and knows with certainty that he will never,_ ever _, be able to bring himself to do anything about it._

 _It’s not the cold and numbing fear when someone looks at him a little too long and Adam thinks, they know, they found out somehow, please don’t tell, I’m_ sorry _._

_It’s not home._

_It’s the Hollow._

_It’s where he belongs._

_His worry turns into excitement when he’s in the main building, through a series of heavy doors and keypads, and sees the kids._

_A dizzying rainbow of variety, making Adam feel not like he sticks out but like he falls to the sidelines; dyed hair, piercings, clothing that would get torn to shreds in Adam’s school; dark skin, light skin, tall, short, plain and unique._

_It’s not even that many kids, but it’s like someone went out of their way to make sure to include as diverse a group as possible._

_A number of kids look up at him, some smile, some look suspicious._

_One of them has dark skin, buzzcut lilac hair, and a multitude of piercings; such an interesting combination that Adam can’t help but meet their eyes._

_They seem to be picking at a hole in their oversized sleeve, which covers their entire hand. As they look up at him, he’s struck by how scared and sad they look. Seeing him, it’s like the person visibly crumbles a little bit, but their eyes only follow him for a couple of seconds, and then Adam is pushed forwards and the person sags back in their seat._

_The guy manhandling him finally lets go and leaves him be, after giving his shoulder a firm squeeze. He hears the man walk back to the door, which shuts with the heavy clunk of a very well reinforced lock._

_The kids stare some more, gawking at the fresh meat, and Adam tries not to look intimidated, which he definitely is. He makes sure to keep his back straight and his gait smooth as he walks further into the crowd, pretending to not even notice how the only exit has just been shut behind him._

_He’d never live it down if his first impression was something embarrassing, like-_

_“Oh. My. God. CuddlePuddles?!”_

_Adam feels his face turn red within seconds, why oh why was that his username and who knew him well enough to know it- but when he turns around and sees a familiar face, though it looks so different in real life and not as a blurry .png, but it’s definitely her- who else would wear their hair like that- he feels like something eased off his shoulders, suddenly, like he’s a little lighter, like this is right-_ ow _\- and she hugs him as if she can’t control herself, and it doesn’t feel the same but it definitely feels nice-_ oh god oh god it hurts _\- and she pulls him out at arm’s length and looks at him-_ his eyes are wet, he must be crying _\- and she says_

  
  
  


_remember me?_

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It’s never been this bad before. Adam is half-convinced he’s dead or dying. He feels his hands on his head but he can’t feel his hands, or legs; they’re unfamiliar dead weight barely keeping him upright. 

Moisture drips down his nose, and his eyelashes stick together when he finally dares to open his eyes. 

Shapes, sounds, sensations come back to him in increments; traffic sounds and car exhaust, the indistinct chatter of the streets, blurry streaks of light that shape themselves into stars as Adam squints at them.

The pain is receding fast, but Adam feels so wiped out it’s almost a separate pain in itself.

Some people are stalling by the little alcove Adam has collapsed in- there’s chairs and cigarette stubs, probably an outside sitting area that’s not in use- oh yeah, he should probably leave before someone calls the cops. A young man writhing on the ground, he must look like a case of withdrawal or something. 

Slowly, gingerly, he picks himself up, still reeling with aftershock, images burned into his eyelids sending pangs of pain into his head. A pair of women send him dirty looks as they hurry past, and he barely has the strength to wave at them.

Well, he no longer has that pent-up energy from the ride, at least. Silver lining and all that.

The first thing he does is find a place to sit down where he won’t be side-eyed; a bench, just off the entrance into a small and clearly man-made park, as far away from people as he can get.

The second thing he does is phone Iris, ignoring the alert of 1 missed call for later. He needs to calm down first; he needs to talk to her while it’s still fresh in his memory, so fresh he can still feel the phantom pain.

He needs a friend.

She picks up on the second ring, though she sounds groggy.

“Adam? Hey, it’s like, almost evening, I’m supposed to be lights out.”

He breathes for a moment, listening to her voice, feeling the gorilla-glass of his phone on his face. 

“Adam? Are you okay?” Iris’s voice shakes the last of the vertigo away, and he replies.

“Yeah. Yeah, hi, I just...found something you might want to know.”

She listens to him struggle to recount his vision, almost entirely silent the whole time, up until he’s clearly done talking.

“You’re sure it was me you saw?”  
“Definitely. Purple looks good on you.”  
  
  
She hmm’s quietly, and he breathes out with the noise, gazing up at the city lights like they’re stars.

“What was I like?”  
  
“You looked….sad. Like you were unhappy to see me there. And you were also alone, which...I don’t know. Might mean something.”  
  
  
He had a feeling Iris and Nisha would stick together like glued, if they had the choice, though it was only a vague hunch. Had something separated them?

“And the other girl?”, Iris asks. “You said you knew her.”  
  
“Yeah,” Adam answers, pressing his fingers into his eyes to replace the city light stars with the pressure-induced kind.  
  
“She was...like, in the memory, I _knew_ I knew her, but I can’t even really remember her face, now. Just feelings, and…”

A coolness, like dipping into the pool on a hot day. Dark eyes, darker than his own, even, and dark hair; lots of dark but offset by these bright neon lights. Like a party, like the city at night, when it's wild. Familiarity and giddiness in a strange mix, something old and something new all at once, and the urge to reconcile the two into here and now, and…

“...the colour blue.”

“...Well. Not a lot of headway, then.”

Adam sighs, but he can’t disagree with her.

They talk a bit longer, but Iris has a bedtime, so they say quick goodbyes and promise to keep staying in touch.

Then it's on to the second call, the one he's dreading.

It's faint, but he remembers...well, he remember remembering. In his flashback, he remembers vividly the feeling of being sorry for his mother, and how he'd pushed it to the back, too afraid to let it take hold, feeling too much hurt to focus on someone else's.  
He'd run away in the middle of the night, then, too.  
  
God, what is he _doing_?

His mother picks up before the first ring has even finished.

"Adam?! Adam, are you okay, talk to me-"  
"Mom, I- I'm fine, calm down, I'm okay. I promise. It's okay."

  
He winces as soon as he's said it, because his mom draws a watery breath and launches into a tirade about how it is _not_ okay, and how he'd better explain himself right now, and it's broken up by these awful cracks in her powerful voice and Adam can't _believe_ what a horrible son he is.

What a horrible son he has to _keep being._

"Mom, I know. And I...I'm sorry."  
"You'd better be sorry-"  
"Not- not just for this. But for last time, too."  
  


His mother finally goes silent for a moment, stunned, and he has to use his opportunity because he needs to get it out, even if it hurts both of them.

"I left...last time. When I was fourteen. I ran away."

She probably wants to rant at him some more, but she's strong and has immaculate self control and knows the impact words can have, and he can hear her thinking as she pauses.

"Why?" she finally asks. Adam doesn't need recovered memories to answer.

"I was..." Adam hesitates, forcing himself to be honest for both their sake.

"I was unhappy. And angry. I- you remember, right, the bullies? I got picked on all the time, and I had to see the principal and stuff. Yeah. It was...I don't know. It was worse than anyone thought. I wanted- I thought if I kept it a secret, I was making it better, somehow? Like if I dealt with it all alone, I'd be more mature, or...something. As if I was going to get a prize for handling things without bothering anyone. And I...I was scared that. If I told someone. It- they- wouldn't help. I guess. I didn't want to _know_...that no one would help."

Saying the words out loud isn't easy. He never realized how much he never got over being picked on, as a kid. Even now, as he's on the verge of tears, he wants to brush it off- kids got picked on, so what? It happens to everyone at some point, builds _character_ or whatever- but he remembers now how he ran away because of how hopeless and alone he felt. Being isolated, being rejected, kickstarted the event that ruined his _life_ , and he never faced it.  
At least, not that he can remember.

"Oh, honey," his mother stutters out through the speakers, and yep, she's _definitely_ crying now, and that means _Adam_ is definitely crying now; he can't even hear what she's saying, but he can tell that she's comforting him, and being spoken to so softly and lovingly makes him want to run and hide and that's _another_ thing that's wrong with him but at the same time, his hand squeezes the phone with all his might and he thinks maybe he's supposed to feel like this. Maybe this is just what it's like, coming clean to someone, admitting mistakes. Getting helped.

Oh, speaking of coming clean. 

He waits for a while, until they've both calmed down, and then pipes up again.

"Also, mom, I'm gay. So. Self-discovery journey all over, right now." 

She laughs, and he laughs, and she says _oh my god, honey,_ _I already knew_ , which makes him laugh more, and he feels like he's been washed and scrubbed clean from the inside. 

It feels good to talk to someone like this. Even if he doesn't remember, he guesses he didn't do a lot of this soul-opening talking before, or he wouldn't be so physically shocked and exhausted. 

Eventually, she concedes. She will allow him to continue his self-discovery journey and not use legal loopholes to bring a grown young-adult back into her custody if he promises to take pictures and call her at least every other day. He promises that, if she promises not to die from worry. 

They hang up after at least three goodbyes, and Adam breathes so much easier, he wonders how he was breathing at all before. 

He's glad he came clean to her, but he's not free of sin.

He never told her what, exactly, he's looking for; just said he was looking for that vague _something_ teenagers always seem to look for.

He doesn't want to bring her into this, not yet, not before he knows what it even is, himself.

Later, it turns out to be a good thing he doesn't.

* * *

_"Do you think...like. Do you think this is all going to end badly?" Mira asks after an unfortunate incident post-tournament._

_She's laying on Adam's shoulder, hair tickling his collarbone so much his skin jumps, but he supposes it's a good exercise in self-control, something he needs to be mindful of, anyway._  
_Kai has his head on Adam's stomach, and when Adam lifts his head up to look at Mira, Kai only burrows further down._  
  


_"Shut up, Mira, you'll scare Adam."_  
  
_"Pssh. As if he's the scaredy-cat on this little animal farm," Mira says and scratches behind Kai's ear; probably as a cat joke, but he clearly leans into it. "You know, I speak fluent cat, so I know one when I see one."_  
_"We're not in the game, Mira, no animal auto-translate. You could say a cat's got your tongue- or, my tongue- wait-"_  
_"Haha. Don't be...catty."_

_Mira sticks her tongue out, Kai blindly grabs for it, and Adam interrupts them before they can fly too far off the pun-handle._

_"What do you mean, Mira?" he asks, and she lays back down from where she was getting fired up. Kai stays still, but Adam can feel the difference in his quiet, like he usually can when he gets to remember how well they know each other._

_"Just," Mira says, and the boys both wait for her to collect her thoughts, because she's the most emotionally intelligent of them by far and it's going to be worth the wait._

_"Just, you know how some kids...get moved on, to the adult division, and everyone says it's really rough there. And I hear rumours about some kids that go somewhere and don't come back at all."_

_Adam holds her tighter, feels her worry like it's his own, but waits it out. It's only quiet for a moment._

_"Don't forget the part where we're gradually losing bits of our brain after every reset."_

_Kai, apparently, can't ever shut up, but then they already know this. Adam gently jostles him, anyway, but it only moves Kai slightly up towards Adam's chest, where he stays._

_"That, too," Mira sighs, and then asks, "Getting worse?" as she nudges Kai's shoulder._

_"Who knows? Maybe I won't remember you guys, next time."  
_  
_Kai shrugs, as much as he can in his position, and Adam's worry grows heavier._

_"Don't be too optimistic," he jokes flatly. Feels Mira huff next to him, imagines Kai's tired smirk. "We're all a little fucked here, yeah, but it'll be alright. They're gonna let us stick together through all of this, we're too valuable of a team to be splitting us up."_

_It's true, and also, from what they hear, people_ like _seeing them work together._

_Like seeing them torn apart, too. But that's another story; as long as they come back together, eventually._

_"We'll figure something out once we're moved to the adult levels," Adam continues, wanting them to stop worrying because it'll amplify his own anxieties and feed into all of them and sometimes_ he _needs to cheer_ them _up, too._

_"We'll figure something out, and we'll stick together, and we won't let anyone forget anyone else. Yeah?"_

_Silence._

_A snicker._

_"You're so cheesy, Adam. I love it. I love sappy, cheesy Adam."_  
_"Seconded. More cheese, please."_

_Adam scoffs and moves to throw them off him and the bed because they're being jerks, but they cling on like a couple of friendly squids, and it ends up with a giggling crumpled heap on the floor and no winners, and that's where they sleep that night._

_Adam falls asleep, thinking,_ we'll be fine.

* * *

Adam wakes up, and remembers nothing from his dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter didn't go the way I thought it would, but I'm always happy when I get the chance to squeeze in more Adam-Mira-Kai interactions.
> 
> P.S! Let me know if you have an idea where I got the title from :D


End file.
